The daily grind: 9-17-13

The Daily Grind provides daily match-up advice for tinkerers and daily fantasy players. I welcome advice to help make this column more effective, including notice of impending weather events, new injuries, and changes to platoon situations. Ownership rates are from Yahoo!

The daily picks are a mixture of Daily League specific advice and information for the more typical fantasy owner.

Today’s weather watch

The game between the Indians and Royals has a 30 percent chance of isolated storms.

Today’s grind

Today has a little bit of everything to choose from. The Braves and Nationals have a surprise doubleheader as well, so any streaming options from those teams may be desirable.

Yordano Ventura will take Danny Duffy‘s turn in the rotation today. He strikes out hitters at a high rate, but he straddles the line with walks. He’s allowed a tad under four free passes per nine innings over the last two seasons.

Tomorrow’s grind

Nathan Eovaldi will face the middling Phillies offense. He’s a typical fantasy replacement level pitcher, good for the occasional spot start but risky to own outright.

Charlie Morton has blossomed into a fairly reliable pitcher. He mostly gets by on his elite ground ball rate supported by solid walk and strikeout rates. The Padres are a decent match-up for him.

The Indians turn to Danny Salazar in their quest to reach the postseason. As before, his strong strikeout and walk rates make him a great play. He’s still likely to be pitch-,constrained so a five-inning outing is not guaranteed.

Pitcher (bum): Scott Diamond versus John Danks is an interesting match-up. You get two struggling pitchers and two poor offenses.

J.A. Happ has struggled since returning from the disabled list. He’s survived several seasons with a bad walk rate, but that seems to have finally come to an end. His fly ball tendencies do not help. He’s opposed by Phil Hughes, who will be on a very short leash.

Aaron Harang is posting similar peripherals to his career rates despite terrible results. While the Giants aren’t a challenging match-up, Harang has struggled enough that he’s worth exploiting.

Bruce Chen has a difficult match-up against the lefty-mashing Indians. He’s having a career best season in the “luck” department, but his peripherals still suggest that he’s the same high ERA pitcher.

About Brad Johnson

Brad is a former collegiate player who writes for FanGraphs, MLB Trade Rumors, The Hardball Times, RotoWorld, and The Fake Baseball. He's also the lead MLB editor for RotoBaller. Follow him on Twitter @BaseballATeam or email him here.

I’m not very impressed by Torres and I actually like the Phillies lineup as currently constructed.

Jimbo, I would use Kluber – Petit – Gray – Dickey in that order. Petit and Gray are really close to a tie but you said you preferred safety and I think Petit is safer because of that weak Mets offense and no DH.

Kluber is one of the top fantasy pitchers in baseball. Without crunching numbers, I’m confident calling him a top 20 pitcher among those that are currently healthy (so no Matt Harvey for example)